Badgers complete trip to nowhere

Last Updated: Nov. 24, 2001

Minneapolis - There were two teams going nowhere Saturday, and the University of Wisconsin got there first. This might be as bad as it looked.

The UW offense could overcome every defense but its own this season, which is all you need to know to explain a 5-7 record. The Badgers haven't been this bad since 1990 when they were 1-10 and expected it.

Barry Alvarez said he didn't know what to look forward to this time, so he predicted "a transitional year." That's what he got all right as Wisconsin made the transition from a perennial bowl power to afterthought in an uncommonly lame Big Ten.

It's not easy for a team to assemble two 1,000-yard passers, a 1000-yard rusher and the nation's leading receiver and still drop four out of its last five games. Gaining 494 yards and losing to a 3-7 public works project like Minnesota is no mean trick either.

UW-Minnesota

Photo/Joe Koshollek

Minnesota players display the Paul Bunyan Axe, the trophy given to the winner of the longest-running rivalry in major college football.

It requires the offense to carry the defense and special teams like an out of work in-law. The strain just piles up, and there's no obvious relief in sight.

Anthony Davis, the year's most pleasant surprise, will be back, and so will Brooks Bollinger and most of a more than respectable offensive line. Lee Evans will be weighing his options, and so apparently will Alvarez as he tries to get his program back to where it's used to being.

Asked what went wrong this year, the coach did a little two-step for the assembled media, taking a position and then taking it back.

"We've never had a defense that's given up this many points," he said and then added as quickly as he could, "All in all we've been very inconsistent as a football team. I think that answers it. Not in one specific area or another. We've just been inconsistent."

Might be, but the problems haven't changed much. Alvarez auditioned enough kickers to fill the cast of "A Chorus Line" last spring, and he had all of his toes and fingers crossed as he mixed and matched a young secondary.

Next spring looks like more of the same.

"Going into the year you guys asked if we were rebuilding or reloading, and I said I didn't know," said Alvarez. "I thought it was a transition year. I knew we were going to have to depend on a lot of young people who hadn't played before.

"As I look at the guys who are coming back, I think offensively we'll have a chance to be a very good offensive football team. We've got some holes to fill on defense and in the kicking game, and that will be our top priority in recruiting."

What he can't find he'll have to grow. The Badgers started eight seniors on defense Saturday, and of those only tackle Wendell Bryant and cornerback Mike Echols figure to leave any gaping holes. Leading the incumbents are sophomore pass rusher Erasmus James and freshman cornerback Scott Starks, who lost his youth but none of his self-assurance.

"I was kind of an island all year with quarterbacks testing me out," said Starks. "I learned an unbelievable amount. I got probably two years' experience in 12 games."

He'll have the chance to put that hard won knowledge to work in the next three years, a privilege Wisconsin's 13 seniors might envy. They would have liked at least to break even this season.

"When you're 6-6, you come back and you can say, 'Hey, we're .500, and we lost a couple of tough ones here and there," said departing tight end Mark Anelli. "You look at the record of 5-7, and it's a big difference. We're a much better team than our record shows."